discovered all the things he had been in
search of--in their right places, naturally."

Eternal vigilance was the price of any progress made in her gardening,
for the moment her eyes were taken off the workmen they committed some
provoking blunder that often undid the work of weeks. "As all the men
were off with the cart," she writes, "I thought I might as well let
Ben plant corn, which he assured me he understood perfectly, for had
he not planted all the first lot which had failed through the
depredations of the rats? At about three Simile and I went down to put
in some pumpkin seeds among the corn, and, to my disgust, I saw why
the first lot of corn had failed. Ben's idea of planting was to scrape
a couple of inches off the ground, drop in a handful of corn, and then
kick a few leaves over the grains. It is really wonderful that any at
all should have germinated.

"While we were working Sitioni[43] came up with some pineapple plants.
He said the people were fighting in Tutuila, but he did not think it
would come to war here. He showed me a large pistol fastened round his
waist by a cartridge belt, and tried to shoot a flying bat with it,
but failed. Simile told me that the vampire bat, or flying fox, as
they call it here, is good to eat, but I do not think I could eat bat.
My lady pig from Sydney is at Apia, but as she only cost thirty-seven
shillings I feel doubts as to her quality. Still, in Samoa a pig's a
pig.

[Footnote 43: Sitioni was a chief, later known as
Amatua, a name of higher rank. We shall hear of Amatua
again at the very end of the story.]

"_Next day._ The pig is a very small, very common pig, but
nevertheless I had the boys make a special sty for her. The old cock
is really too bad. Every time an egg is laid he strikes his bill into
it, and, throwing it on the ground, calls his harem to a cannibal
feast. Something, either the rats or a wild hen, has destroyed all our
corn."

Perhaps no other part of their life in Samoa was so full of happiness
for them as these first days--just those two alone, for the presence
of their childlike native helpers counted as naught--with all the
surroundings yet in a primitive state and little to remind them of the
sophisticated world from which they had been glad to escape. Both were
natural-born children of the wild. In the brief tropical twilight they
often walked together and talked of the beautiful future they thought